New toys are always fun. This time around was no exception. Recently I got to play with the MSI X99S Gaming motherboard, some cool Kingston DDR4 3000MHz memory and an Intel Core i7-5960X (Haswell-E): 3.0-3.5 GHz, 20 MB L3 Cache, LGA 2011-v3 processor at a show in Hull. You can check out the pictures here. What was very interesting is that we had no preparation time with the motherboard and other hardware before the EXPO started. Basically I just handed over the hardware to the guys who had volunteered to help Team GB at the Platform 2014 EXPO namely Greg, Paul who were there for the entire show, and Nick who travelled up just for the Friday.
I had first-hand opportunity to see how people got to grips with new hardware that they had never used before. From those observations this overclocking and set-up guide was born.
Let us start with the basics. Folks if you have not seen the MSI Gaming range of boards they are visually quite sweet pieces of kit. From a benching perspective I like the clean socket area, MSI have always been very good at presenting a clutter free board and this time round they have done themselves proud. The colour scheme is black and red as you can see, and stands apart from the yellow and black of the Xpower and Mpower boards.
Layout gets a solid 9/10 from me.
Other key differences between those board and the Gamer 7 is price. With this board retailing at under £200 in the UK and retaining heaps of features that you would expect from a more expensive offering it is a very attractive board for the enthusiast gamer and bencher who does not want to pay £360 for a motherboard. So what do you get for your money with the Gamer 7?
Check out the full specifications page here
http://uk.msi.com/product/mb/X99S-GAMING-7.html#hero-overview
The key picks for me are listed below.
Multi-GPU: Quad SLI and Crossfire
Turbo M.2: with transfer speeds up to 32 Gb/s
8+2(SATA Express) SATA ports for heaps of storage if needed
2+8 USB ports located on the IN/OUT panel and a PS/2 connector for the serious gamer in all of us.
Killer E2205 Gigabit LAN controller
Tossed in for good measure is a premium licence for XSplit Gamecaster, an application for recording and streaming gaming videos.
And most importantly for me the boards comes with a handy two digit LED diagnostic display. This LED display not only tells me where I am in the boot process, it also provides me with a diagnostic code when there is an issue that makes problem solving so much easier. One additional feature that I quite liked is that once in OS the two digit display shows the CPU temperature. Nice one MSI.
The board is a standard ATX form factor so will fit into most cases, unlike some of the monsters I have used in the past. Just think back to the MSI BigBang II board man that was a huge motherboard.
There are trade-offs to account for the great price this board is available at. The big one is PCIe lanes. Now as you all know the CPU determines the number of PCIe lanes. So the Intel i7-5690X which has 40 lanes of PCI-Express 3.0 interface compared to both the i7-5930K and the i7-5820K which has the number of PCIe lanes reduced to 28. Now what that means is this.
The board supports quad SLi if you run two dual core VGA’s. Same for quad Crossfire if both the AMD cards have dual graphic cores. If you are using single core then the maximum number of video cards you can use is three. Most of us will only use one or two graphic cards so this is not an issue and both cards will run at 16x if you are using the i7-5690X processor.
Price gets 8/10
Getting Started
First thing you need to do is make sure everything works before you spend hours wiring up your case, and fitting a master piece of a water cooling system. Remember these CPUs do not come with coolers and they are warm little beasties so make sure you cool them properly.
What I would suggest is use the box that the motherboard came with as a test bench for your first set up. Just lay the motherboard on top of the box and test out all your hardware. I have a dedicated test bench that I use before I start to build into a case but the work the box does is exactly the same it provides a non-conductive surface for me to work on.
Right we have our board on the test bench and the CPU is about to be fitted for the first time. Take your time and do not rush. Rushing leads to dead and damaged hardware.
The CPU is quite easy to fit but this time there are a few differences to how the whole process is done. First up is the fact that for some it will be the first time they see two latching mechanisms. The sockets that I have used before released the latching arm away from the CPU towards the DDR modules. This chipset does it the other way, the latching arms move to the inside towards the CPU. Once you have the dual latching arms open fit the CPU gently, there is a gold dot on the CPU that will help you to orientate the processor correctly. Use the supplied MSI guide if you are not sure which corner the dot is meant to be aligned to. The CPU will simply settle down onto the pins and will not require any force to seat at all. Latch first the one side to secure the cover and then finally the second arm to secure the mechanism.
Right the CPU is in and you have carefully mounted your cooler. Remember to not over tighten, or to tighten unevenly. Follow the pattern of fastening that your cooler manufacturer suggests to ensure an even mount.
With the CPU and cooler done it is time to move on to the memory. To start off use only one stick of DDR4 memory. The CPU is the memory controller and the golden rule of these new platforms is make sure your memory is working before you install completely. So what we do is fit one stick of ram and one graphic card with no hard drive just yet. All we want to do is make sure that once we fit the PSU connectors that the board and CPU power up, sees the memory and allows us to get to bios.
Once in bios you have the option to update the BIOS. I am not a big fan of updating a motherboard bios just for the sake of having the latest bios, especially in a mature platform. That being said these X99 boards are not a mature platform. Check what your shipping bios is and decide if you want to update to the latest bios from the official MSI product support page. A FAT formatted USB stick will be needed to flash via the BIOS utility and is quite easy to do, simply follow the prompts on screen and do not power off let your system do the update process at its own time and pace.
Pro Tip - I would strongly recommend that you do not flash a bios from the OS if you can possibly help it. In many years of providing motherboard support I have seen so many cases of a bricked board because of failed flash in OS.
Now that we have the bios version we wish to use we are able to move on.
At this point we are going to prepare for the additional sticks of memory. I like to see if the CPU is able to use the XMP profile and run the memory at the frequency that it says on the box. In my case I have memory that runs at 3000MHz and many reviewers complained that early BIOS version were not able to run their memory at rated frequency.
Looking at the BIOS image above you see in the top left hand corner a XMP button. Press it.
Now F10 and enter to save and exit.
The system will begin the training process of your memory. It will take some time do not worry. Look at the two digit poster and see where the system is in the process. You may find that your system will cycle between, 04, A4 b6 and 55 quite a bit and not take you back to the BIOS screen. But most likely is that your system will sit at b4 for some time before cycling through to A2 and you will be in the BIOS screen and your memory is at the XMP profile frequency.
Problem solving - If your system does not want to post to bios with the XMP profile power down and remove the stick of memory from that slot and place it in another, repeat the process until either you have success or you have tried all the slots. You are now going to have to reseat your CPU as I suspect your CPU is not perfectly mounted. I had to do this myself on the first time I used this motherboard so all good.
Now try again and see if you have success. If no luck this time either go into the bios and navigate to the XMP profile entry, here you will most likely see your memory has two profiles. Select the second one and F10 and enter. This time your system will almost certainly post to bios.
Once you have XMP profile enabled and have posted to BIOS power off and fit the rest of the memory, the motherboard has a handy little diagram that shows were the memory sticks are to be fitted. No need to pull your manual out and actually read it.
Power on and see how it goes. These platforms are all about memory and memory training is the single most important thing you will do. So be patient here and let your system find itself. How it works is quite simple. The bios has Intel defaults that it will use when not instructed to do otherwise – this is the failsafe bare basics of the memory controller and most of the time we have memory that is set at a higher frequency than the basic or default level. To achieve these faster speeds we make some changes to the bios and any changes mean that the CPU has to learn what the hardware is and what the hardware (memory) configuration is. Hence memory training. As you will see I am using BIOS H.61 and I was able to boot into BIOS and OS with the XMP profile.
XMP is sorted and now it is time to fit the OS drive. Leave your system with only the XMP profile overclocked for now and install your OS. Once your OS is done we will do the CPU clocking. Do not get to invested in this OS as it is most likely going to get a few BSOD or WHEA errors while we find out what our best OC settings are. Your 24/7 OS should be a fresh system that has never had a BSOD and would normally only be installed once you know what your OC is.
CPU Overclocking Time
Navigate down the left hand side of the landing BIOS screen to the middle panel. Marked with a nice big OC.
Using your mouse click to access the main OC pages.
Here you will notice there is a bunch of information at the top of the screen, this shows you what your current system setup is.
As we have already set the XMP profile we can begin to change the CPU ratio or multiplier as it is most commonly called, here.
Please do check to see if your strap is 100 or 125.
Some XMP profiles will change the strap to 125 to get to 3000MHz on the 1:18 bios ratio. What that means is your CPU will be clocked 125 x the multi you use. So 36 x 125 is 4.5GHz and not 3600MHz as it would be if using the 100 strap.
For now we will only increase the multiplier so that your CPU frequency is just over 4000MHz, that is either 40x with the 100 strap or 32x if your system is at 125. Nothing more, that is all you are going to do for now, the CPU will adjust the voltages automatically so simply F10 and enter and lets boot to OS.
Once in OS you are going to need CPUz and XTU, both can be downloaded directly from the web onto your OS if you are connected to the Internet. I am assuming that your OS has drivers installed.
CPUz can be found here.
XTU download from Intel here.
Open CPUz and confirm that your memory is running at the correct frequency. Remember that it is DDR so double what you see on the memory table. Double Data Rate is what DDR means. So my memory is running at 3000MHz and CPUz shows 1500MHz as it should.
Back to the main CPU frequency tab and now open XTU. Resize the window of the XRU application and position the CPUz window so that you are able to see the voltage.
Run the XTU benchmark. Your score is irrelevant for now, this is simply an exercise to see if your system will pass and to make a note of the voltage your CPU automatically sets for 4000MHz.
Now you have two options, either make use of the software that MSI provide to OC in OS or the bios to do so. Remember our target is 4.4 or 4.5 24/7 stable. The software is very simple to use and I will leave that to you to work out. I am going to focus on the in BIOS method of overclocking as that is where we would have to return in any case once we have our maximum stable overclock to set up the bios for 24/7 use.
Right re-boot out of OS and return to the bios. Once in bios increase the multi by one and F10 and enter. Small steps are best, we need to have a good understanding of what the CPU is like and the voltages that the CPU needs for the different frequencies. Once in OS repeat the open CPUz and XTU method and again make note of the CPU voltage under load.
Pro Tip - Voltages are meant to drop when under load. What you are seeing is called VDroop and is a built in part of the Intel processor. Many people seem to think this is a bad thing and do all they can to eliminate the VDroop. I am not one of them. I am quite happy with the small amount of voltage that is reduced when the CPU is under extreme load, this mechanism is there to keep my CPU safe and that is a good thing.
We repeat the process outlined above and boot to OS before running both CPUz and XTU. Make note of the different voltages your CPU needs for the set frequency. Typically a voltage of 1.4 will be needed for 4400MHz + with an average CPU. A great CPU will only need 1.4volts for 4600MHz sadly I do not have one of those my CPU needed a bit more than average voltage to run stable as we will see later.
We repeat the single multiplier increase until such time as the OC does not pass the XTU benchmark or our temps have passed 80’C peak during the benchmark.
While running the benchmark you will have the temperature being recorded and displayed constantly. I strongly urge that you adopt the 80’C as your maximum temperature while running the XTU benchmark and your stability stress tests that you will do later.
As you can see here the maximum temperature was 77'C this is pretty normal for the CPU as they are quite hot. Cooling is key.
My CPU topped out at 4.5Ghz or 4500MHz. I needed a touch over 1.4volts to maintain a stable OC.
This is my XTU score with nothing tweaked and the voltage on auto. Now the next step is to set up a suitable voltage plan in the BIOS to benefit from the Intel built in power saving mechanisms. I like the offset method of setting voltage and that is what I am going to demonstrate.
Setting Voltages
In the bios navigate down to the voltages. Here you will find a host of different options and the one you are looking for is the CPU voltage that is set to auto by default. There are four options. Auto, manual, adaptive and offset.
I have selected offset as my voltage mode.
Now I need to select the positive or negative option. What this means is that the amount of voltage that I indicate will either be added to or subtracted from the default automatic applied voltage that the CPU sets. This is the value that we recorded while watching the CPUz during the XTU benchmark.
For my system I want the least voltage that I need to run stable at 4.5GHz so in this instance I have set + and 0.050. Each of you will need to define this value for your own system. Start small at 0.010 and work up as needed. Each time you make an adjustment please test the stability by running the XTU benchmark in the OS while keeping an eye on the voltage that is displayed on the CPUz tab.
Running a single instance of XTU benchmark or some other stressful benchmark such as Cniebench R15 does not mean your system is stable nor does it mean your overclocking is at an end. It can be both of course but that is the beauty of overclocking these days we can tinker all we like in that quest to squeeze out just that little bit more ouof our hardware.
Two things we can do firstly we can adjust the ring core frequency higher and then tighten up the memory timings. Both those actions are easy to do and will have a noticeable increase in efficiency. The XTU benchmark has a strong memory component that reflects positive change.I set my ring multiplier to 27 and left it at that. No changes to the voltages were needed.
Moving on to the memory. One of the options we have is to either link or unlink the memory. I select link so that what I do to one stick will be done to each of the four sticks in system.
The first thing I do is change the Channel rate to 1. This is right at the top of the page. The XMP profile is normally set to 2T. Enter in 1 and exit the memory-timing page.
F10 and enter to save and exit to OS. Let your system train up the memory and see if you can pass the XTU benchmark with the tighter setting.
You should also notice an increase of a few points in score, if your score is less or not changed then check that the Ch Timing has been changed. Use CPUz to confirm.
The next timing to explore is the tcl, the profile has set it to 38 on my stick and I was able to lower it to 36 and still be stable. There is no way I could change my Cas, Tras and TRFC timings with my kit of ram so I left them as it was.
Because memory is so important to the X99 platform I ran a couple of Maxxmemm to see what difference the change in timings made and this is my before result.
Maxximemm Download here.
Compared to the after. A significant improvement as can be seen in the increased score.
Before
After
Wrapping up the OC
What we have achieved means nothing if our system is not stable. What stability means for you and me might differ from what it means to others. There is no one definition of stability that satisfies all. Personally I consider a system stable if I am able to do ALL the things I want to use my system for and never have a BSOD or system freeze ever. Others feel that a system is only stable if it can run some stress test for two or three days at a time without an error.
To stress test your system I advocate running the XTU stress test for at least an hour plus using your system to run the games you are going to play or the applications you most use. I do an additional test that is very stressful to the system memory and the C States built into the Intel platform. Here is what I do. I open up 50 to 80 Chrome, Firefox or IE tabs. Start a 1080p movie, open 10 or so applications and have active documents, files or jobs running. Copy a huge amount of data to the clipboard and then put the system to sleep. If after a few hours the system wakes without any problems then I know my memory is not going to be the cause for any issues in the future. Try it with your stable system and see how you get on, some folks may be surprised.
Regardless you need to find the stability test that you are happy with and once satisfied just enjoy your system. Systems do degrade over time and in two or so years you may have to increase the amount of voltage by one or two notches needed by your CPU to maintain the OC you have set.
Ease of OC 9/10
Final Words
I do not normally get to play with a gamer board. I have historically only used the top of the range benching boards. Those are the boards that cost way too much money in my view. I can honestly say that I am very impressed by what I have seen. The Gamer 7 is a very tidy board with BIOS that has pretty much all of the settings anyone could possibly need to tinker and fine-tune their system. Personally I would suggest MSI that they stream line the BIOS layout and make it less busy. Simple once click menus instead of convoluted multi mouse clicks to access settings would make the entire BIOS more user friendly especially for first time users. That being said the bios is comprehensive and does what it says it will. The voltage range is one of the best I have seen outside a dedicated benching board.
I did give the board a run under LN2 and was easily able to OC my CPU to 5.4GHz bench stable at 1.61 volts. I only used the command centre application in OS for this LN2 session and was very impressed with the software. However I was not able to change the BCLK in OS and found that very frustrating. The overall layout of the board made setting up for LN2 rather simple. The absence of a second 12volt CPU power connector did make me a little nervous about pushing volts through the system, however my concerns were groundless as the system ran rock solid without any fluctuations throughout the benching the eight hour benching sessions over two days.
I have been very impressed with the design, the robustness of the construction and especially with the feature set. A well priced X99 board that has all the features of a much more expensive offering, plus the simplicity of setting up for new or first time home PC builders means I have no reservations in recommending this board to all who wish to dive into the brave new world of X99 gaming.
I had first-hand opportunity to see how people got to grips with new hardware that they had never used before. From those observations this overclocking and set-up guide was born.
Let us start with the basics. Folks if you have not seen the MSI Gaming range of boards they are visually quite sweet pieces of kit. From a benching perspective I like the clean socket area, MSI have always been very good at presenting a clutter free board and this time round they have done themselves proud. The colour scheme is black and red as you can see, and stands apart from the yellow and black of the Xpower and Mpower boards.
Layout gets a solid 9/10 from me.
Other key differences between those board and the Gamer 7 is price. With this board retailing at under £200 in the UK and retaining heaps of features that you would expect from a more expensive offering it is a very attractive board for the enthusiast gamer and bencher who does not want to pay £360 for a motherboard. So what do you get for your money with the Gamer 7?
Check out the full specifications page here
http://uk.msi.com/product/mb/X99S-GAMING-7.html#hero-overview
The key picks for me are listed below.
Multi-GPU: Quad SLI and Crossfire
Turbo M.2: with transfer speeds up to 32 Gb/s
8+2(SATA Express) SATA ports for heaps of storage if needed
2+8 USB ports located on the IN/OUT panel and a PS/2 connector for the serious gamer in all of us.
Killer E2205 Gigabit LAN controller
Tossed in for good measure is a premium licence for XSplit Gamecaster, an application for recording and streaming gaming videos.
And most importantly for me the boards comes with a handy two digit LED diagnostic display. This LED display not only tells me where I am in the boot process, it also provides me with a diagnostic code when there is an issue that makes problem solving so much easier. One additional feature that I quite liked is that once in OS the two digit display shows the CPU temperature. Nice one MSI.
The board is a standard ATX form factor so will fit into most cases, unlike some of the monsters I have used in the past. Just think back to the MSI BigBang II board man that was a huge motherboard.
There are trade-offs to account for the great price this board is available at. The big one is PCIe lanes. Now as you all know the CPU determines the number of PCIe lanes. So the Intel i7-5690X which has 40 lanes of PCI-Express 3.0 interface compared to both the i7-5930K and the i7-5820K which has the number of PCIe lanes reduced to 28. Now what that means is this.
The board supports quad SLi if you run two dual core VGA’s. Same for quad Crossfire if both the AMD cards have dual graphic cores. If you are using single core then the maximum number of video cards you can use is three. Most of us will only use one or two graphic cards so this is not an issue and both cards will run at 16x if you are using the i7-5690X processor.
Price gets 8/10
Getting Started
First thing you need to do is make sure everything works before you spend hours wiring up your case, and fitting a master piece of a water cooling system. Remember these CPUs do not come with coolers and they are warm little beasties so make sure you cool them properly.
What I would suggest is use the box that the motherboard came with as a test bench for your first set up. Just lay the motherboard on top of the box and test out all your hardware. I have a dedicated test bench that I use before I start to build into a case but the work the box does is exactly the same it provides a non-conductive surface for me to work on.
Right we have our board on the test bench and the CPU is about to be fitted for the first time. Take your time and do not rush. Rushing leads to dead and damaged hardware.
The CPU is quite easy to fit but this time there are a few differences to how the whole process is done. First up is the fact that for some it will be the first time they see two latching mechanisms. The sockets that I have used before released the latching arm away from the CPU towards the DDR modules. This chipset does it the other way, the latching arms move to the inside towards the CPU. Once you have the dual latching arms open fit the CPU gently, there is a gold dot on the CPU that will help you to orientate the processor correctly. Use the supplied MSI guide if you are not sure which corner the dot is meant to be aligned to. The CPU will simply settle down onto the pins and will not require any force to seat at all. Latch first the one side to secure the cover and then finally the second arm to secure the mechanism.
Pro Tips – These CPUs (and indeed all modern CPUs) are very sensitive to mounting pressure. Often if the CPU is not perfectly mounted the DDR memory will not get picked up or a memory slot will seem to not be working. Do not stress just remount the CPU.
Right the CPU is in and you have carefully mounted your cooler. Remember to not over tighten, or to tighten unevenly. Follow the pattern of fastening that your cooler manufacturer suggests to ensure an even mount.
With the CPU and cooler done it is time to move on to the memory. To start off use only one stick of DDR4 memory. The CPU is the memory controller and the golden rule of these new platforms is make sure your memory is working before you install completely. So what we do is fit one stick of ram and one graphic card with no hard drive just yet. All we want to do is make sure that once we fit the PSU connectors that the board and CPU power up, sees the memory and allows us to get to bios.
Once in bios you have the option to update the BIOS. I am not a big fan of updating a motherboard bios just for the sake of having the latest bios, especially in a mature platform. That being said these X99 boards are not a mature platform. Check what your shipping bios is and decide if you want to update to the latest bios from the official MSI product support page. A FAT formatted USB stick will be needed to flash via the BIOS utility and is quite easy to do, simply follow the prompts on screen and do not power off let your system do the update process at its own time and pace.
Pro Tip - I would strongly recommend that you do not flash a bios from the OS if you can possibly help it. In many years of providing motherboard support I have seen so many cases of a bricked board because of failed flash in OS.
Now that we have the bios version we wish to use we are able to move on.
At this point we are going to prepare for the additional sticks of memory. I like to see if the CPU is able to use the XMP profile and run the memory at the frequency that it says on the box. In my case I have memory that runs at 3000MHz and many reviewers complained that early BIOS version were not able to run their memory at rated frequency.
Looking at the BIOS image above you see in the top left hand corner a XMP button. Press it.
Now F10 and enter to save and exit.
The system will begin the training process of your memory. It will take some time do not worry. Look at the two digit poster and see where the system is in the process. You may find that your system will cycle between, 04, A4 b6 and 55 quite a bit and not take you back to the BIOS screen. But most likely is that your system will sit at b4 for some time before cycling through to A2 and you will be in the BIOS screen and your memory is at the XMP profile frequency.
Problem solving - If your system does not want to post to bios with the XMP profile power down and remove the stick of memory from that slot and place it in another, repeat the process until either you have success or you have tried all the slots. You are now going to have to reseat your CPU as I suspect your CPU is not perfectly mounted. I had to do this myself on the first time I used this motherboard so all good.
Now try again and see if you have success. If no luck this time either go into the bios and navigate to the XMP profile entry, here you will most likely see your memory has two profiles. Select the second one and F10 and enter. This time your system will almost certainly post to bios.
Once you have XMP profile enabled and have posted to BIOS power off and fit the rest of the memory, the motherboard has a handy little diagram that shows were the memory sticks are to be fitted. No need to pull your manual out and actually read it.
Power on and see how it goes. These platforms are all about memory and memory training is the single most important thing you will do. So be patient here and let your system find itself. How it works is quite simple. The bios has Intel defaults that it will use when not instructed to do otherwise – this is the failsafe bare basics of the memory controller and most of the time we have memory that is set at a higher frequency than the basic or default level. To achieve these faster speeds we make some changes to the bios and any changes mean that the CPU has to learn what the hardware is and what the hardware (memory) configuration is. Hence memory training. As you will see I am using BIOS H.61 and I was able to boot into BIOS and OS with the XMP profile.
Pro Tip – All CPUs are different. Many users get frustrated because they read reviews where the CPUs can run 5GHz at 1.2v and memory at some insane speed with ease. Well guys quite a few reviewers will have been sent a binned CPU by the motherboard vendor, and or have binned a few CPUs to ensure they have a good one for writing reviews. This review is using a retail CPU that was bought here in the UK there has been no binning at all. It is not the best I have seen nor is it the worst, in fact it is pretty average.
XMP is sorted and now it is time to fit the OS drive. Leave your system with only the XMP profile overclocked for now and install your OS. Once your OS is done we will do the CPU clocking. Do not get to invested in this OS as it is most likely going to get a few BSOD or WHEA errors while we find out what our best OC settings are. Your 24/7 OS should be a fresh system that has never had a BSOD and would normally only be installed once you know what your OC is.
CPU Overclocking Time
Navigate down the left hand side of the landing BIOS screen to the middle panel. Marked with a nice big OC.
Using your mouse click to access the main OC pages.
Here you will notice there is a bunch of information at the top of the screen, this shows you what your current system setup is.
As we have already set the XMP profile we can begin to change the CPU ratio or multiplier as it is most commonly called, here.
Please do check to see if your strap is 100 or 125.
Some XMP profiles will change the strap to 125 to get to 3000MHz on the 1:18 bios ratio. What that means is your CPU will be clocked 125 x the multi you use. So 36 x 125 is 4.5GHz and not 3600MHz as it would be if using the 100 strap.
For now we will only increase the multiplier so that your CPU frequency is just over 4000MHz, that is either 40x with the 100 strap or 32x if your system is at 125. Nothing more, that is all you are going to do for now, the CPU will adjust the voltages automatically so simply F10 and enter and lets boot to OS.
Once in OS you are going to need CPUz and XTU, both can be downloaded directly from the web onto your OS if you are connected to the Internet. I am assuming that your OS has drivers installed.
CPUz can be found here.
XTU download from Intel here.
Open CPUz and confirm that your memory is running at the correct frequency. Remember that it is DDR so double what you see on the memory table. Double Data Rate is what DDR means. So my memory is running at 3000MHz and CPUz shows 1500MHz as it should.
Back to the main CPU frequency tab and now open XTU. Resize the window of the XRU application and position the CPUz window so that you are able to see the voltage.
Run the XTU benchmark. Your score is irrelevant for now, this is simply an exercise to see if your system will pass and to make a note of the voltage your CPU automatically sets for 4000MHz.
Now you have two options, either make use of the software that MSI provide to OC in OS or the bios to do so. Remember our target is 4.4 or 4.5 24/7 stable. The software is very simple to use and I will leave that to you to work out. I am going to focus on the in BIOS method of overclocking as that is where we would have to return in any case once we have our maximum stable overclock to set up the bios for 24/7 use.
Right re-boot out of OS and return to the bios. Once in bios increase the multi by one and F10 and enter. Small steps are best, we need to have a good understanding of what the CPU is like and the voltages that the CPU needs for the different frequencies. Once in OS repeat the open CPUz and XTU method and again make note of the CPU voltage under load.
Pro Tip - Voltages are meant to drop when under load. What you are seeing is called VDroop and is a built in part of the Intel processor. Many people seem to think this is a bad thing and do all they can to eliminate the VDroop. I am not one of them. I am quite happy with the small amount of voltage that is reduced when the CPU is under extreme load, this mechanism is there to keep my CPU safe and that is a good thing.
We repeat the process outlined above and boot to OS before running both CPUz and XTU. Make note of the different voltages your CPU needs for the set frequency. Typically a voltage of 1.4 will be needed for 4400MHz + with an average CPU. A great CPU will only need 1.4volts for 4600MHz sadly I do not have one of those my CPU needed a bit more than average voltage to run stable as we will see later.
We repeat the single multiplier increase until such time as the OC does not pass the XTU benchmark or our temps have passed 80’C peak during the benchmark.
While running the benchmark you will have the temperature being recorded and displayed constantly. I strongly urge that you adopt the 80’C as your maximum temperature while running the XTU benchmark and your stability stress tests that you will do later.
As you can see here the maximum temperature was 77'C this is pretty normal for the CPU as they are quite hot. Cooling is key.
My CPU topped out at 4.5Ghz or 4500MHz. I needed a touch over 1.4volts to maintain a stable OC.
This is my XTU score with nothing tweaked and the voltage on auto. Now the next step is to set up a suitable voltage plan in the BIOS to benefit from the Intel built in power saving mechanisms. I like the offset method of setting voltage and that is what I am going to demonstrate.
Setting Voltages
In the bios navigate down to the voltages. Here you will find a host of different options and the one you are looking for is the CPU voltage that is set to auto by default. There are four options. Auto, manual, adaptive and offset.
I have selected offset as my voltage mode.
Now I need to select the positive or negative option. What this means is that the amount of voltage that I indicate will either be added to or subtracted from the default automatic applied voltage that the CPU sets. This is the value that we recorded while watching the CPUz during the XTU benchmark.
For my system I want the least voltage that I need to run stable at 4.5GHz so in this instance I have set + and 0.050. Each of you will need to define this value for your own system. Start small at 0.010 and work up as needed. Each time you make an adjustment please test the stability by running the XTU benchmark in the OS while keeping an eye on the voltage that is displayed on the CPUz tab.
Running a single instance of XTU benchmark or some other stressful benchmark such as Cniebench R15 does not mean your system is stable nor does it mean your overclocking is at an end. It can be both of course but that is the beauty of overclocking these days we can tinker all we like in that quest to squeeze out just that little bit more ouof our hardware.
Two things we can do firstly we can adjust the ring core frequency higher and then tighten up the memory timings. Both those actions are easy to do and will have a noticeable increase in efficiency. The XTU benchmark has a strong memory component that reflects positive change.I set my ring multiplier to 27 and left it at that. No changes to the voltages were needed.
Pro Tip The ring multiplier cannot be increased too high or your system will fail I have found. Increasing the ring voltage does not make much of a difference either in trying to get the ring frequency higher. It is just how it is with most motherboards at this time very possibly a bios fix may solve this in the future. But it is not mission critical at all.
Moving on to the memory. One of the options we have is to either link or unlink the memory. I select link so that what I do to one stick will be done to each of the four sticks in system.
Pro tip Always used a matched kit of ram. Quad channel memory is hugely stressful to an IMC and a matched kit has been binned and programmed to work together at the rated settings, XMP profiles. Even if both your dual kit are the same make and model that is not a guaranty that your memory have the same or compatible programming or even the same batch of memory chips. I have had to address thousands of user problems over the last few years simply because they have tried to save a few £’s.
The first thing I do is change the Channel rate to 1. This is right at the top of the page. The XMP profile is normally set to 2T. Enter in 1 and exit the memory-timing page.
F10 and enter to save and exit to OS. Let your system train up the memory and see if you can pass the XTU benchmark with the tighter setting.
You should also notice an increase of a few points in score, if your score is less or not changed then check that the Ch Timing has been changed. Use CPUz to confirm.
The next timing to explore is the tcl, the profile has set it to 38 on my stick and I was able to lower it to 36 and still be stable. There is no way I could change my Cas, Tras and TRFC timings with my kit of ram so I left them as it was.
Because memory is so important to the X99 platform I ran a couple of Maxxmemm to see what difference the change in timings made and this is my before result.
Maxximemm Download here.
Compared to the after. A significant improvement as can be seen in the increased score.
Before
After
Wrapping up the OC
What we have achieved means nothing if our system is not stable. What stability means for you and me might differ from what it means to others. There is no one definition of stability that satisfies all. Personally I consider a system stable if I am able to do ALL the things I want to use my system for and never have a BSOD or system freeze ever. Others feel that a system is only stable if it can run some stress test for two or three days at a time without an error.
To stress test your system I advocate running the XTU stress test for at least an hour plus using your system to run the games you are going to play or the applications you most use. I do an additional test that is very stressful to the system memory and the C States built into the Intel platform. Here is what I do. I open up 50 to 80 Chrome, Firefox or IE tabs. Start a 1080p movie, open 10 or so applications and have active documents, files or jobs running. Copy a huge amount of data to the clipboard and then put the system to sleep. If after a few hours the system wakes without any problems then I know my memory is not going to be the cause for any issues in the future. Try it with your stable system and see how you get on, some folks may be surprised.
Regardless you need to find the stability test that you are happy with and once satisfied just enjoy your system. Systems do degrade over time and in two or so years you may have to increase the amount of voltage by one or two notches needed by your CPU to maintain the OC you have set.
Ease of OC 9/10
Final Words
I do not normally get to play with a gamer board. I have historically only used the top of the range benching boards. Those are the boards that cost way too much money in my view. I can honestly say that I am very impressed by what I have seen. The Gamer 7 is a very tidy board with BIOS that has pretty much all of the settings anyone could possibly need to tinker and fine-tune their system. Personally I would suggest MSI that they stream line the BIOS layout and make it less busy. Simple once click menus instead of convoluted multi mouse clicks to access settings would make the entire BIOS more user friendly especially for first time users. That being said the bios is comprehensive and does what it says it will. The voltage range is one of the best I have seen outside a dedicated benching board.
I did give the board a run under LN2 and was easily able to OC my CPU to 5.4GHz bench stable at 1.61 volts. I only used the command centre application in OS for this LN2 session and was very impressed with the software. However I was not able to change the BCLK in OS and found that very frustrating. The overall layout of the board made setting up for LN2 rather simple. The absence of a second 12volt CPU power connector did make me a little nervous about pushing volts through the system, however my concerns were groundless as the system ran rock solid without any fluctuations throughout the benching the eight hour benching sessions over two days.
I have been very impressed with the design, the robustness of the construction and especially with the feature set. A well priced X99 board that has all the features of a much more expensive offering, plus the simplicity of setting up for new or first time home PC builders means I have no reservations in recommending this board to all who wish to dive into the brave new world of X99 gaming.
